Review by Clint Driscoll
Western America – December 1998 – Colorado Central Magazine
An Empire Wilderness: Travels into America’s Future
by Robert D. Kaplan
ISBN: 0-679-45190-0
SUCH TERMS as post-urban pod, post-industrial settlement patterns, the new localism and decentralization are rarely, if ever, heard in Central Colorado; yet, the phenomena they describe have and will change this region just as they have or will transform much of the U.S., particularly the West.
In An Empire Wilderness: Journeys into America’s Future, Robert D. Kaplan documents many events and trends — some bleak and frightening and others quite hopeful — which are shaping America’s future.
It is Kaplan’s contention that the U.S. is now in the final stage of its imperial age. Geography, economics, technology, and immigration are transforming the country from a continental, east-west oriented, industrial nation into a series of post-industrial, semi-autonomous city-states and realigned geopolitical regions.
An Empire Wilderness documents the events and trends of that transformation. Kaplan, the author and a contributing editor at Atlantic Monthly, traveled the American West for two years. He followed the route of Coronado’s 1540 expedition north from Mexico into what is now Kansas, traced the trek of Lewis and Clark from St. Louis to the Pacific, and drove the sprawling suburbs of Los Angeles and Orange County. What he found and who he listened to on these journeys may very well prove him and other modern thinkers right.
Perhaps the most disturbing descriptions come from his Mexican/Southwest travels. Moving north from Mexico City toward Nogales, he discovered a nation in which the central government is imploding, while armed troops and drug cartels control the country. At Nogales, Kaplan realized the border between the U.S. and Mexico means nothing. What happens in Mexico affects the Southwest much more than what happens in Washington. Family and economic ties, dual citizenship and U.S. entrepreneurial and industrial ventures are obliterating the line.
Economic and political upheavals affect both countries and government policies bow to reality. Along the border the drug war is seen in shades of gray. Drugs are the substitute economy which cushions retail markets and may even have averted major violence in Mexico during the 1994-95 peso crisis.
Farther north Kaplan discovered signs of the widening gulf between the educated elite and those who serve them. In Tucson, the faculty and researchers at the University of Arizona network world-wide with colleagues. There, immigrant and Native-American gangs control the drugs and turf on the poor, working-class south side, while developers drain the aquifers to build houses for the well-off in the Catalina Hills to the north. As he also found in Orange County, California; Omaha, Nebraska; and St. Louis, Missouri, those who are plugged into the international business network know more about who they are connected with thousands of miles away than they do about their neighbors.
FROM ALBUQUERQUE to Great Bend, Kansas, where Coronado gave up his quest for Quevira, Kaplan found life and economics are changing. Where family cattle ranches, energy development, and defense contracts reigned for decades, now theme-park tourism, industrial hog farming, and corporate agriculture hold sway — or soon will. Their markets are world-wide, affected by Asian recessions as much as U.S. farm policy. The companies employ large numbers of low-wage, immigrant workers who overwhelm the small towns, testing long-time residents’ views on racism, gangs, homelessness, drugs, and public education.
At St. Louis, jumping off point for Lewis and Clark, the old city no longer exists. The central core and East St. Louis have become burnt out shells inhabited by those who are no longer capable of running their lives, let alone a city. Upwardly mobile whites and blacks have moved out and now occupy suburban municipalities which spread well beyond the old city boundaries. Where once an identifiable city existed, now 92 entities fragment the hinterland. The same has occurred throughout the U.S. but especially in the West.
Because the world is becoming more plugged in, individuals and corporations no longer require a centralized, identifiable place. Cities have given way to what Kaplan refers to as “post-urban pods,” municipalities which service suburbs, gated communities, and business parks. They provide shopping, culture, utilities, and basic protection so citizens may pursue their jobs and lives as they see fit. One can live and prosper in Anaheim just as well as Bozeman or Salida. For many, a sense of loyalty to place is disappearing.
WHILE IT MAY SOUND as though all is lost, this transformation offers opportunities. America is reaping the benefits of immigration. In Orange County, Los Angeles, Nogales, and Cascadia (Vancouver/Seattle), Indians, Iranians, Chinese, Mexicans, Pakistanis, native-born blacks and whites are combining in a synergistic melange which is driving international business. In the heartland, Vietnamese, Laotians, and Mexicans, drawn originally to low-wage jobs in meat processing plants and farms, are revitalizing small towns with their entrepreneurial drive.
In much of the Interior West a “new localism” is taking shape. Formed by common geographical, economic, and cultural ties, this localism is revitalizing areas once depressed. This expansion also induces a gentrification which increases costs and the risk of a theme-park mentality needed to attract tourist dollars or second-home buyers. And blue-collar workers are finding fewer high-paying jobs tied to resources.
In the most interesting chapter, Kaplan interviews Dan Kemmis of Missoula, Mont. Kemmis, convinced that Western urban regions are becoming more important in people’s lives, believes the social and “environmental versus development” problems which are part of the transformation will be solved locally, making state and federal programs irrelevant. He also maintains that the breakup of Canada is inevitable and will lead to strong north-south bonds. “[Maintaining] continentalism could lead to a weakening of the [U.S.] itself. And because of the increasing importance of water, who or what controls the water-rich `top of the continent’ will define power relationships in the future North America.”
AN EMPIRE WILDERNESS is worth the read. Kaplan’s prose is spare and his descriptions sharp. (Like many Easterners he is overwhelmed by the vast distances and beauty of the West, but for the most part keeps his lyricism in check). His interviews are cogent, and he can meld disparate aspects into a coherent whole.
Although Kaplan seems to say the changes are inevitable, he is humane, not unsympathetic to the pain these changes inflict on individuals. Though he also tends to be iconoclastic, his extreme statements are backed with facts and quotes. The text is footnoted and the book includes a very good bibliography and index.
For those who read Colorado Central because it voices the concerns of those who decry the suburbanization of the region and the disappearing way of life which held sway here for the last 50 years, An Empire Wilderness will explain the causes and show why the changes may already be a fait accompli.
— Clint Driscoll
